The shale revolution has dramatically transformed this country’s energy landscape, making the US an exporter of crude, products and LNG—a far cry from the situation 12 years ago when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana.

Prolific production from unconventional sources in the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford in Texas keeps OPEC up at night. Latin America has become ever more dependent on US gasoline. And even India and South Korea are becoming customers of US crude.

The presenter who arguably received the best questions at Wednesday’s Crude Oil Quality Association meeting in New Orleans was the US Department of Energy’s economist, Kenneth Vincent.

His presentation was part overview, such as the locations of the four salt caverns that hold the more than 700 million barrels of US oil – Texas and Louisiana, and the maximum drawdown capacity – 4.4 million b/d. But there were also some nuggets not found on factsheets such as the how the physical salt caverns are shrinking due to geological pressures and how “distribution issues are a major concern (for the DOE) currently and going forward.”

About 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in four sites along the US Gulf coast seems to have recently inspired the imagination of a cash-strapped Congress.

With US crude production nearing record highs and prices falling below $50/b, federal lawmakers are pushing to sell millions of barrels from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fund bills with little, or nothing, to do with energy.

The ongoing US oil boom has compelled some lawmakers and analysts to question the need to keep so much crude stockpiled and sparked speculation that a government sale of tens of millions of barrels could be imminent. But could new rationale for how much crude the US keeps in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve actually increase the amount of crude in the US stockpile?